racy. This war is like no other
since the fall of the Roman Empire. It is a war of the passions. What man
can calculate the power of those untried elements? I implore your highness
to consider with the deepest caution every step to be taken from this
moment. Europe has no other commander whom it can place in a rank with
yourself; and if you, at the head of the first army of Europe, shall find
it necessary to retreat before the peasantry of France, it will form a
disastrous era in the art of war, and a still more disastrous omen to
every crowned head of Europe."

The duke looked uneasy. But he merely said with a smile--"My dear Guiscard,
we must keep these sentiments to ourselves in camp. You are a cosmopolite,
and look on these things with too refined a speculation. Like myself, you
have dined and supped with the Diderots and Raynals--pleasant people, no
doubt, but dangerous advisers."

"I have!" exclaimed his excited hearer; "and neither I, nor any other man,
would have met them without admiring their talents. But I always looked on
their _coterie_ as a sort of moral lunatics, the madder the more light
they have."

"Our question is simply one of fact," said the duke.

"Yes, and of a fact on which the fate of Europe hinges at this moment! The
monarchy of France is already cloven down. What wild shape of power is now
to take up its fallen sword? The sovereignty of time, laws, and loyalty
are in the grave, and the funeral rites will be bloody; but what hand is
to make the ground of that grave firm enough to bear the foundations of a
new throne?

"The heels of our boots and the hoofs of our horses will trample it solid
enough!" exclaimed Varnhorst.

"The much stronger probability is," replied Guiscard, "that they will
trample it into a mire so deep, that we may reckon the Allied powers
fortunate if they can draw themselves out of it. France is revolutionized
irrecoverably. Three things have been done within the last three months,
any one of which would overthrow the strongest government on the Continent.
By confiscating the property of the nobles, she has set the precedent for
breaking down all property, thrown the prize into the hands of the
populace, and thus, after corrupting them by the robbery, has bound them
by the bribe. By destroying and banishing the persons of the nobility, she
has done more than extinguish an antagonist to the mob--she has swept away
a protector of the people. The provinces will henceforth